❖ Former Mexican President Vicente Fox “has become an unlikely leading advocate of marijuana legalization . . . [due to] Mexico’s mounting drug violence.” Since 2006, around “70,000 Mexicans have died, and thousands more disappeared” due to drug-related violence.

❖ Mexico has “asked the United States to investigate the allegations [that the NSA collected "emails, phone calls and text messages" of now President Enrique Pena Nieto], saying they would be a serious violation of its sovereignty if proven true.”

❖ The US Department of Education is beginning to “get some real data, using a method [called] randomized clinical trial, in which groups of subjects are randomly assigned to get either an experimental therapy, the standard therapy, a placebo or nothing.” Translate ‘therapy’ into “textbooks, curriculum guides, homework, quizzes”, etc., and you get the general idea.

Aloha, fatster and news pups…! Everybody has always looked askance at me, when I told them I’ve seen a ‘green flash’ several times, while watching a gorgeous Hawaiian Sunset…! Well, finally, here’s some video proof of the phenomena…! ;-)

…The four officers leaked information about a situation room, which was established by the Saudi Arabian defense minister, the CIA, and the Israeli intelligence agency the Mossad on Jordanian soil, the report said quoting a British diplomatic source.

The officers are also accused of providing the Syrian army with certain information about the routes, which Saudi militants used while entering Syria to fight against the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

The senior military officers were advisers to the chairman of Jordan’s chiefs of staff and had strongly objected to Amman’s participation in a foreign-sponsored insurgency in Syria.

That’s also where we’ve been training all those ‘rebels’ for quite some time now…!

…Hours after Israel admitted to firing “ballistic targets” that resembled missiles in the Mediterranean, a launch that the country did not priorly announce, Russia’s Defense Ministry spoke out against “playing with arms and missiles” in such a “volatile” region.

“Is there any other region more volatile and packed with weapons today?” Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov told journalists. “I don’t completely understand how someone could play with arms and missiles in that region today.”

Antonov called on those who launched the so-called missile-like targets to be more responsible for regional security and “not play with fire.”

“The Mediterranean is a powder keg,” he said. “A match is enough for fire to break out and possibly spread not only to neighboring states but to other world regions as well. I remind you that the Mediterranean is close to the borders of the Russian Federation.”

Russia has been quite emphatic, since the mention of war with both Syria and Iran, that they would get involved. I believe China makes the same statements, but less frequently. We’ve been playing with all our bright shiny things in their backyard for a decade. There is no doubt in my mind that Russia and China have also been testing their bright shiny things against ours and know our strengths and weaknesses. They’d have been fools not to.

Which is why, in my mind, it’s really fuckin’ stupid for us to start another war over there.

Secretary of State John Kerry assured the public that the Obama administration’s summary of the intelligence on which it is basing the case for military action to punish the Assad regime for an alleged use of chemical weapons was put together with an acute awareness of the fiasco of the 2002 Iraq WMD intelligence estimate.

Nevertheless, the unclassified summary of the intelligence assessment made public August 30, 2013, utilizes misleading language evocative of the infamous Iraq estimate’s deceptive phrasing. The summary cites signals, geospatial and human source intelligence that purportedly show that the Syrian government prepared, carried out and “confirmed” a chemical weapons attack on August 21. And it claims visual evidence “consistent with” a nerve gas attack.

But a careful examination of those claims reveals a series of convolutedly worded characterizations of the intelligence that don’t really mean what they appear to say at first glance.

The document displays multiple indications that the integrity of the assessment process was seriously compromised by using language that distorted the intelligence in ways that would justify an attack on Syria.

You need Netflix. It’s cheaper than cable and you can avoid Kerry and all the rest of them. I find my blood pressure is much lower when I allow the frontpager’s to summarize what they were forced to endure.

Free Syrian Army Chief of Staff Salim Idris: Israel Is an Enemy Country; With Proper Weapons, We Can Topple Al-Assad within 40 Days

Following are excerpts from an interview with Free Syrian Army Chief of Staff Brigadier-General Salim Idris, which aired on Al-Jazeera Network, on May 8, 2013:

Salim Idris: As for us being Israeli collaborators – the only Israeli collaborator in the region is the criminal Bashar. The Israeli collaborators are the people who put on the show of the 2006 war – Hizbullah and its leader Hassan Nasrallah. They diverted all their forces to the slaughtering of Syrians. Their scheme is totally clear. They used to hide behind the pretext of resistance and the fight against Israel, but now it has become clear that they are implementing a sectarian, Iranian, Safavid plan in the region.

[...]

If [we] get the necessary weapons and ammunition, we will be capable of toppling the regime in less than 40 days. My brothers, the rebels, know I’m not just bragging.

[...]

Israel is an enemy country. I say this loud and clear. It occupies Syrian lands. The FSA will not change its position regarding that country before [Israel] withdraws from the Syrian lands, and recognizes the legitimate rights of the Arab Palestinian people. [Then] we will abide by the decision of the Arab people of Syria.

❖ Labor Secretary Thomas Perez: “The living-wage strikes that we’ve seen recently and the March on Washington really stand for the proposition that nobody who works a 40-hour week should have to live in poverty.”

❖ Mexico has “asked the United States to investigate the allegations [that the NSA collected "emails, phone calls and text messages" of now President Enrique Pena Nieto], saying they would be a serious violation of its sovereignty if proven true.”

I can haz sovereignty? And, er, um, since the US is not keen on anyone investigating the NSA, Nieto is probably out of luck.

❖ Wonder how many have made it through the vetting process: “One fifth of CIA job applicants with suspect backgrounds have ‘significant terrorist’ connections.”

Seems to me we’d be safer by shutting the whole thing down.

❖ “Barack Obama has confirmed that he plans to go beyond punitive strikes against the Assad regime . . . [and employ] a broader strategy to step up help to the Syrian opposition.” (10:21pm ET entry)

Oy. Don’t believe a word they say. Ever. Kerry is throwing everything he can think of out, hoping everyone will hear something they like. Doesn’t matter that it’s all contradictions. I guess.

Good afternoon, fatster and all. Lots of good comments that reflect my views. Thanks for the education link; it will take some time to process it. It did lead me to a book review about white women in Harlem in the ‘flapper’ era. It is Miss Anne in Harlem and looks good.

“Well, he [Kerry] lies. And he knows that he lies. This is sad,” Putin remarked as he spoke to human rights activists on Wednesday, saying that the Al-Nusra Front terrorist organization, which pledged allegiance to Al-Qaeda, has been at the forefront of the rebel groups fighting Assad’s forces, and that the US is well aware of that.